July | 2017 | A Birder's Notebook

It’s been a very long time since I’ve written a blog post. The reason is I’m not one to go out and do a lot of birding during the heat of the summer. Here in the Ohio valley the combination of the heat and humidity keeps me indoors. However I’m still birding in my own way, as a family of Eastern Bluebirds have discovered my Bluebird feeder and the meal worms.

I have been doing some birding by ear as my wife and I ride our bikes through the shady portions of the Little Miami Bike Trail. And retirement fast approaches I’ll be getting out more and more, so stay tuned.

Here’s one of my own haiku’s written for those dog days of summer.

As the heat rises

off the endless black ribbon

the Crow disappears

Just like it is when the Bobolinks return to Voice of America Park every spring as I talked about in my last blog post, this is also the time for the Dickcissels (Spiza americana) to make it’s annual return to Fernald Preserve. The beauty of Fernald Preserve isn’t it’s past as a uranium enrichment facility, it’s the fact that they’ll never built a soccer field or any other sports field or home development on the property. Which in turn leaves it for our breeding grassland birds, like the Dickcissel.

Very vocal this time of year they’re easily seen sometimes as they perch near the top of vegetation. As in years past they can be seen, but usually from a distance which can make getting a photo difficult as the results can be really grainy.

This year I was a little luckier as both female and males were more cooperative with people being close by.